


(my love for you) through the seasons

by reginamea



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: #BelieveInSwanQueen, Drabble Cycle, F/F, Gen, Pre-SQ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4013251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginamea/pseuds/reginamea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma comes into her life like a storm and Regina cannot resist, although she tries and tries and tries</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (in spring) a storm against my breast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> season 1

Behind her bitter breast, Regina’s heart contracts and then expands with the pull of a long-forgotten memory as Emma settles into her life, jarring and unexpected and impossible to dislodge.

She is the wedge between Regina and her son, a rift ever-deepening the longer Emma stays.

And stay she does.

Emma grows roots in Regina’s town, strong and resilient roots without ever knowing, and Regina hates her for her ignorance, for her goodness.

But most of all, Regina hates herself.

For the longer Emma stays, the more Regina feels her expanding heart crack, fine fissures laying bare the red and fertile soil buried deep beneath her bitter breast.


	2. (in summer) a flower inside my chest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> season 2

Seeds have sprung in the garden behind her house and the once fallow grounds now seem to mock Regina in their abundant bloom while she herself wilts and withers behind closed doors, mind, body, and soul.

But not her heart.

Her heart, that traitorous organ, burns and swells inside her chest because, for just a moment, Emma believed in her, and now the fissures in her heart have grown into runlets that nurture the fledgling shoots of hope.

Regina buries her fingers in the cool earth and pulls the overgrowing weeds from the ground, imagines the flickering pulse of a heartbeat between her hands.

But not her heart.


	3. (in fall) the wind in my lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> season 3

There is a raw wind knocking at her lungs these days, pestering, persistent. The new curse has brought her back empty and hollowed out like a cave and the wind keeps pressing inward, inward.

She may not remember the lost months, but there are two distinct holes in her heart that speak of the desolation left by a year of separation, a drought that has devastated the harvest she had been nourishing meticulously inside her bosom.

Now she watches as her beautiful boy and his golden mother clear the crippled remains of her harvest away with simply a smile and a touch, locking the wind outside once more.


	4. (in winter) your soul in my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> season 4

On her face, sorrow and ire weave together like a shroud, tight and pale, as Emma’s name gleams mockingly before her in the light of this new morning.

Regina can feel the pull of the darkness within her bones, beckoning her with the promise of old comforts in new disguises, yet the memory of Emma’s light beats too fiercely beneath her breast, a fluttering reminder of the woman who has given her all for Regina’s happiness.

Somewhere deep inside her chest, Regina’s heart closes itself off against the settling cold, wrapping around all that remains of Emma like a protective cocoon, warm and pulsing and full of hope.


End file.
